Friday, February 28, 2014

A Different Kind of Senior

It was grand celebrating those glory days when the seniors
of Fort Meade High School
had graduated in 1919. And it’s been quite as grand to relive those reunion
occasions, thanks to the letters and newspaper clippings my grandmother had
saved among her special papers.

Along with all the newspaper clippings that Rubie McClellan Davis’ friend Zemla Doke Griffith sent her from Fort Meade, Florida,
Zemla had included a long and newsy letter.

Personal letters like this are not the type of item people
are accustomed to receiving in our current times. While Zemla’s letter was
postmarked October 20, 1983—not very long ago—it does still reach back to a
world that many people now would find foreign. Got friends who went to the
hospital or lost a job? Now, we think nothing of posting that on Facebook or
even Twitter, so everyone in our circles would know.

Perhaps only fifteen years ago, the way to share such
personal news would be by email—or at the least by picking up the phone and
calling, even if it were long distance.

But thirty years ago? Back in 1983, when this letter was
written, there were still many people who held to the notion that it would have
been extravagant even to pick up the phone to chitchat, if it involved a call
between, say, Ohio and Florida.

So consider a letter like Zemla’s the 1983 equivalent of
Facebook—all lumped together in one huge post.

What did she talk about? News, of course! Important stuff—at
least to folks like Rubie and Zemla. The latest on what’s been happening to
anyone and everyone they knew in common from the “good old days” when they were
all together in high school—the mighty senior class of Fort Meade School.

When that subject had been worn out—hoping, of course, that coming
in the reply would be more tidbits to keep the conversation going—the topics
would head toward other familiar areas, like family, neighborhood, hobbies.

After discussing the news from classmates Elizabeth Morgan
and Marie Alderman—or anyone else who had recently been in touch—Zemla
responded to what my grandmother must have written in a previous letter. I’m
not at all surprised to discover that Rubie’s eyesight had been a topic of
correspondence. By that time, Rubie most likely had had her cataract surgery—which
brought with it an outcome she never found quite matching her expectations. I can’t
tell you how many times I heard my grandmother regret what had become of “my
eye-uhs,” as she would call them in her distinct version of a southern accent.
Apparently, the “new things that have come out” that Zemla was championing were
the very things my grandmother was bemoaning.

The reference Zemla made to “your daughter” concerned Rubie’s
oldest daughter, my mother, who after being widowed had sought work in the
education arena just as the then-recent economic downturn had caused many
school districts to lay off large numbers of teachers. My mother, after selling
the family home in New York, had found a
position teaching in a private school in Los
Angeles—a radical change from the public school
environments back home. Discovering an associate had recently been appointed
principal of a private school in Minnesota,
she signed on at that less-urban school setting, moving yet again, halfway
across the continent. Finally, tired of being so far removed from family, she
resigned herself to return home to Columbus,
Ohio, where her parents and
sister still lived. Until she could find a teaching position, she made ends
meet by doing restaurant work along with those ever-hopeful gigs at substitute
work in several school districts in the area. It was likely at that point that
my grandmother had made mention of her daughter’s circumstances to her
confidante, Zemla.

Keeping in mind that, in 1983, Rubie would have been eighty
four years of age, and her husband Jack nearing eighty six, it’s no surprise to
hear Zemla offer her condolences for Jack’s declining health. All these
classmates and their spouses—at least, among those whose spouses were still
alive—were likely experiencing similar circumstances. No matter how well they
seemed to be doing, it was a slower and more circumspect “well” than it had
been back in 1919, the year they were the mighty seniors just about to graduate
from high school.

She [Elizabeth Morgan]
said she had a letter from Marie [Alderman] and she had just lost a sister. That
made 5 deaths in her family since the first of the year. Marie has had some
problems with her heart but seems to be doing better now. She is not as active
as she was though. I hear from her occasionally.

I am so sorry you are having so much
trouble with Jack in such poor health and your eyes so bad. Do hope the doctor
has been able to improve your vision by now. It does seem with all the new
things that have come out you could get some relief. Hope everything is better
for you.

I hope your daughter can land a
permanent teaching job. I think she is wise to do as much substitute work as
she can get. I really don’t see how she holds up to two jobs though. Teaching
is so hard and so is restaurant work.

5 comments:

I love the old letters. I feel like I have had a peek inside their lives and their hearts when I read them. I heard someone speak that said with us relying so much on texting, emails etc. for communication, the generations that follow will not have that glance within our lives because most of us will not be leaving behind the boxes of old letters or diaries. I am ever grateful for the few things that I have, but you, Jacqi, have a gold mine. Thanks for the beautiful way in which you share your treasures.

I used to be quite the letter writer, myself, but somehow that seems like not only an entirely separate age, but a different universe. What has become of us? You are right: use up all that stationary. It will make someone's day. And we all could use a little bit of that!

About Me

It is my contention that, after a lifetime, one of the greatest needs people have is to be remembered. They want to know: have I made a difference?
I write because I can't keep for myself the gifts others have entrusted to me. Through what I've already been given--though not forgetting those to whom I must pass this along--from family I receive my heritage; through family I leave a legacy. With family I weave a tapestry. These are my strands.